James Ford Wrote Album From Hospital Bed During Chemo — SkimNews
SkimNews Take
A hospital bed doubling as a recording studio inverts a producer's usual role — the same illness that halted his career enabled his first solo record.
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- James Ford was diagnosed with leukemia on Christmas Eve 2024 after weeks of unexplained flu-like illness that doctors initially suspected was a tropical disease from a recent India trip with Damon Albarn.
- From his room at St Barts hospital, Ford wrote and recorded his new album 'Lost in Another World' in two weeks during chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, using synthesisers, a microphone, and an Ikea table his wife Sereen brought in.
- Hospitalized Ford also remotely produced Gorillaz and the Mercury prize-nominated War Child Help(2) — working with Olivia Rodrigo and Beth Gibbons — including one Abbey Road session conducted during a blood transfusion.
- Over nine months of treatment Ford endured two more rounds of chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant, sepsis three times, and an ICU stay, and will have his blood monitored for years for cancer recurrence.
- Ford's career arc spans co-founding Simian Mobile Disco with Jas Shaw in the 2000s electro-rave era to producing for Arctic Monkeys, Florence + the Machine, Pulp, Depeche Mode, Fontaines DC, and Jessie Ware.
- Klaxons' aborted second album — where the band took a daily five-drug mix they called 'the five-star general' and worshipped a chewed-up apple as their spiritual guru — remains the only project Ford has never finished.
Why it matters: Ford, who produces for Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Depeche Mode, and Gorillaz, recorded a solo album in two weeks during chemotherapy at St Barts and remotely produced Gorillaz and the Mercury-nominated War Child Help(2) from his hospital bed, proving his illness didn't stop the pipeline of work his major-artist clients depend on.
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